Spread of wildfires and Hepatitis A by homeless show societal change, not climate change, is the real threat.

This weekend, I reported on the spate of fires that have erupted though Southern California, which included the Skirball Fire that threatened the famous Getty Center Museum, destroyed several posh Bel Air homes, and shut the 405 freeway.

In a move that surprised nobody, Governor Jerry Brown was quick to blame all the infernos on climate change, but a cooking fire by a homeless person started the fire.

Gov. Jerry Brown surveyed the devastation Saturday in Ventura — the area hardest hit by firestorms that have displaced nearly 90,000 people in Southern California — calling it “the new normal.”

…During a news conference at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, Brown said climate change may exacerbate the weather conditions that caused the wildfires to explode. He expressed sympathy for residents who had lost their homes and animals, saying the fires were horrific and a “terrible tragedy for so many people.”

That includes climate scientists such as University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass, who moved to extinguish the “now normal” narrative by arguing that the data “strongly suggests there is no credible evidence” that global warming is fueling this fall’s California coastal wildfires, and that claims to the contrary are “baseless, if not outright wrong.”

“The bottom line of all this is that observations and the best scientific reasoning do NOT suggest that global warming is enhancing CA coastal wildfires through effects on temperature and precipitation,” Mr. Mass said Monday in a post on his weather and climate blog.

He and others have pointed to the heavy precipitation earlier this year in California after five years of drought, which resulted in high vegetation growth that feeds the flames.

Finally, wildfires aren’t the only significant public threat that has its origin among California’s expanding homeless population. The Hepatitis A outbreak, which has been working its way through the nation, has its roots in Southern California’s transient community.

In The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Margot Kushel reviews the root cause of the worst Hepatitis A outbreak in over 20 years.

The environmental conditions associated with homelessness — overcrowding in encampments and emergency shelters, exposure to the elements, and limited access to facilities for hygiene and food preparation and storage — facilitate infectious-disease transmission. Homeless people’s often-poor underlying health, high prevalence of risky health-related behaviors, and poor access to nonemergency health care increase their susceptibility to infectious disease and heighten its severity and complicate disease control.

In response to the recent hepatitis outbreak, there has been a campaign to vaccinate and educate people at risk and to provide portable hygiene facilities, disinfected with bleach, in areas where homeless people congregate. These responses, though laudable and likely to contain the outbreak, will not alter its underlying causes.

Nor will the underlying cause of the fire be adequately addressed either, especially by our climate-change obsessed politicians.

Comments

Not as many as you might think. Illegals can get welfare and handouts, because most actually want to work and will follow the rules to get things (ironic). Also most Illegals are from South America and have support networks in their communities.

Most of the homeless that is seen is from addiction. The problem is that addiction is expensive and the cost of living in S. CA is through the roof because of the stifling regulation from the state and federal government. The more that the liberal “help” the more that they remove productive labor and hand it to unproductive labor, thereby wasting labor. This means more and more people are left unproductive, costs rise and the extra that addicts had is gone. It doesn’t take long for them to hit the streets.

Most of the vagrants here in California are caucasian. An overwhelming number of them are criminals released from state prisons and local jails. Why? Leftist activist federal judged declared state prisons overcrowded – and instead of building new prison facilities, Jerry Brown and Progressives decided to simply release criminals into our working and lower middle class neighborhoods. I think both parties(federal judge and state pols) colluded and planned the release of these so-called “not violent” criminals.

With 5 percent of the world’s population we’ve got 24 percent of the world’s prison inmates. I’d say that the problem isn’t a need for more prisons; it’s a need for more reason. We incarcerate for the stupidest of things. Read about Prohibition, for example, and how wildly counterproductive that was. Then project forward to our absolutely insane War On Drugs. While there are other factors, the war on drugs contributes substantially to the appeal and therefore the addiction and imprisonment of huge numbers of people. We used to hang witches. Now we’re doing a more modern version of the same. As an aside, all those imprisoned slave laborers’ primary function is to contribute to the profits of the prison-industrial complex. Really fair to have more of same just so the unjustified wealthy can easily become more wealthy while large numbers of workers are removed from ever being eligible for productive labor once they’ve got a record.

The main causes of chronic homelessness are hard core drug addiction, including alcoholism, and mental illness. Since the mid-1970s, when liberal do-gooders forced states to reintegrate incompetents into society, we have spent literally trillions of dollars to end homelessness. And we haven’t made the smallest dent in the problem. Most of the chronic homeless population refuses to follow societal rules in order to take advantage of the facilities available. The criminal element in the homeless population largely comes from thieves and drug users.

As long as people view hard core drug addiction and chronic mental illness as diseases which can be cured, they are doomed to failure.

Alcoholism is no more “hard core” (nor any other kind of) ‘drug “addiction,”‘ than is Diabetes an habituation. Alcoholism is a disease, with a diagnosis, with recognizable symptoms and with a prognosis. The diseased state in which those who’ve habituated themselves to drugs find themselves is secondary to that habituation and is, thus, a consequence.

And that the self-induced consequence of habituation to drugs is called “addiction,” is anther story. Having more to do with the defrauding of and theft from insurance companies, than it has with “disease.”

Sorry, Charlie, but alcoholism is not a “disease”. It is largely the result of a person with an addictive personality over-indulging in the intake of alcohol. In true alcoholics, it is also augmented by physical addiction. Only the physical addiction can be “cured”. The addictive personality traits will always be present. If you lock a person in a room with no alcoholic beverages, he will not become inebriated. Now, technically, diabetes is not a disease either. It is not transmittable from person to person and, except for the rare cases of virally induced diabetes, is not caused by an outside agency. It is also a physical condition. In neither case can the actual condition be corrected. Only the symptoms can be treated.

Thank you, Mr Mac, for your opinion but you may – just – comprehend that I prefer to arrive at Truths via the Deductive School than to be swayed by opinions supported by little through nothing other than what is presented as and sometimes even has the appearance of “evidence,” created in support of its predeterminations by the Quod Erat Demonstrandum School. (Very often) of “psychology.” Or by, more accurately, that school’s statisticians by another name.

As for your December 14 2017 at 11:27 AM posting, above, your suggestion that whomever you were addressing ought “spend more time among the homeless, who live on the streets,” arrived more than forty years too late, for me. Since 1974 I have spent all of my spare time volunteering among those folk, many of those years associated with the world’s most successful rehabilitation mission whose most important attributes – falling immediately after that it has facilitated the turning around of SCORES LIKELY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of lives (of subsequently street vendors and cab-drivers through captains of industry, Oscar-winning actors and state supreme-court judges) is that, in its more than 100 years of Good Works in a major Left Coast city’s Skid Row, it has listened to nary even one statistician-posing-as-a “psychologist’s” delusional rabbitings-on about “addictive personalities” — nor taken even a single Brass Razu of local, city, state nor federal-government money.

Add that to the Napa fire. The cost to society is usually inversely proportional to the societal worth and contribution by these individuals. The obligations and responsibilities are placed on those that are the least likely to cause mayhem. That is a constant anywhere. By necessity it is a parasitic culture. Nothing new, but with far more repercussions today.

nah, just that you get the government you deserve/want. And while I feel bad for the people of California, there are consequences for actions: electing moonbats who are more concerned with the environment than people, and more concerned about the “humanity” of vagrants than the rights of taxpayers.

you assume facts not in evidence. I’m San Diegan born and raised. The LA/SF/Sacto coastal and gov’t feeders are over-voting the red counties. I’ve NEVER voted for a Donk because they don’t believe in my values. We are a minority now, but we’re here

What’s a windstorm and wildfire have to do with politics? Not all of the fires are due to vagrants lighting fires. I mean, you’re aware of that aren’t you?

Oh, and my folks’ house came within 300 yards of burning down. They’ve been voting republican for 70 years (pop is a Korean war vet). Do they deserve to get roasted in a fire? What about me? I’m a hardcore right winger? Do I deserve it, too?

Some of the ” Homeless,” have Mental problems, but many just don’t care what they do. They are ” Outlaws,” to society, and don’t live by any rules or common sense. Some of the ” Squatters,” make an ” Instant Ghetto,” where ever they go.

As usual, fixing problems properly costs a lot of money, time and effort. Someone has to lead. Others have to be willing to work to solve the problem. And the public has to realize that a decent (not perfect, decent) solution requires substantial effort and, perhaps, a change in how we do business.

Little of that is evident in how we handle the homeless situation, in California or elsewhere.

Other commenters are correct: most of the domestic homeless are that way because of serious mental illness, compounded by alcohol or drug addiction, with a layer of petty criminality on top. Fixing this is HARD — you have to have shelter, some modest decency about food and health care, institutionalization (again) for those who just can’t make it work in the real world, and more enlightened justice and civil structure. That costs a lot of money that we don’t want to spend, and it’s unpopular politically so leaders don’t want to lead. You sure won’t get Jerry Brown to do so.

We need new mental institutions — not the fortresses of old, but places were these mentally ill folks can live (or at least sleep). Those need to be supervised, and not by Nurse Ratchet. Therapy for alcoholism and drug addiction doesn’t work well — we need better research, and better people to try and make it work. We might seriously need to end the War on Drugs which has been a substantial waste of time and humanity.

And there are a few homeless who do indeed need a nightstick upside the head. Call it an attitude adjustment.

I don’t see one single politician or civil servant with the willingness to say publicly what I just said.

Perhaps you should spend some more time among the homeless population who live on the streets.

We are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year to take care of the homeless population. And, it just gets bigger and bigger. Why, because the number of mentally ill people keeps increasing. For the last 40 years the libtards have been insisting that we incorporate the mentally ill into mainstream society. People with serious mental conditions are routinely drugged to some semblance of stability then thrown out [the medical profession calls it being discharged] on the street with a pocket full of pills and no supervision. And, the pills make them feel funny. So guess what happens? That’s right, they stop taking the medication and revert to their previous unstable condition. And make no mistake, hard-core drug addicts are also mentally ill.

As to your idea of having “mental institutions” where the mentally ill can sleep, we already have them. They exist in every city and many towns. They are called homeless shelters. The homeless can go there, get a hot meal and a clean bed. But, they usually have to be in the facility by 5pm, they have to be relatively clean or take a shower upon entry. They can not smoke or use drugs. In other words they have to live by certain rules. They either refuse to do that or they are unable to do that and so some can not utilize the facilities. So, they end up sleeping behind a carwash, in a hobo camp or in jail. Unless these people are forced to remain in a facility, they just won’t do it. They are mentally incompetent.

Now, about medical care. Just about every local Health Department offers care for the indigent, including the homeless. The homeless simply do not avail themselves of it.

The mistake that do-gooders make is assuming that these people are capable or desirous of changing their behavior in order to fit into the greater society. The majority of the chronic homeless are neither.

End the War on Drugs. Yeah, that will cure the problems of a society with a homeless population which is almost totally dependent upon illicit drugs or alcohol. It is like giving an alcoholic more booze and expecting him to sober up. In fact, let’s allow over the counter sales of opioids while we’re at it. Good luck.

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